The over-18 show starts at 9:00 p.m. Tickets are $17.50 and can be ordered online at Ticketmaster.

The Dublin-born singer has been performing a unique style of American rockability fused with Irish sensibility for years, and performed at the College Green concert for President Barack and Michele Obama in May.

For a full schedule of concerts at Brighton Music Hall this summer, click here.

For concerts throughout greater Boston and Massachusetts, visit IrishBoston.org

The son of a longshoreman from South Boston, Flynn's speech was entitled, "America's Policies Must be Rooted in the Dignity of Every Person."

On Thursday, July 28, Flynn is being honored with a Lifetime Service Award by the St. Joseph's Society in Boston's North End, as part of this year's annual Italian festival and Unity Week in Boston.

The award ceremony takes place between 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. at the Paul Revere Mall on Hanover Street, across from the Old North Church. Irish music featuring singer Pauline Wells and other Irish bands will also take place.

For more information on Irish cultural activities in the Boston area year round, visit IrishBoston.org

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The 18th annual Glasgow Lands Scottish Festival is taking place next Saturday, July 16, 2011 at Look Park in Florence, Massachusetts, just outside of Northampton.

The all-day festival includes a variety of great Scottish, Irish and Celtic performances, including The Bell Family, Enter the Haggis, and Boston Blackthorne among others. For a full list of performers click here.

In addition, there are bagpipe bands, Highland dancing, Scottish athletic competitions, and plenty of Scottish vendors, family entertainment and food and beverage courts.

For a year round look at Irish cultural activities in Massachusetts and the New England region, visit IrishMassachusetts.com.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, an Irish immigrant from Ballygar, County Galway, started Boston's annual tradition of a musical tribute to Independence Day on July 4, 1855, with a concert on Boston Common.

Michael Cummings, founder and president of the Patrick S. Gilmore Society, says that Gilmore emigrated to Boston in 1849. He was a talented cornet player and soon got work leading the Salem Band before eventually returning to Boston to form his own Gilmore Band.

By 1855, when he held the concert, Boston was filled with Irish immigrants who had been coming there over the past decade to flee Ireland's famine and economic woes. According to Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston's Colorful Irish History, over 100,000 Irish had arrived between 1845 and 1849, transforming the city.

The New York Times in 1853, wrote a sarcastic column that most of the people enjoying the Common on Independence Day, complaining "the whole costermongery was so preponderently Hibernian, that, if the Pilgrim Fathers could have come out of their graves, the surprise of it would have sent them back again shaking their heads, and telling every ghost they met that the chronic Irish rebellion had at last succeeded and that the strongest holds of Anglo-Saxondom were overrun by the Celts- they had the Boston Common in their hands!"

Cummings notes that Gilmore was also the composer of the anthem, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which he published in 1863 at the height of the American Civil War.

Gilmore continued the July 4th tradition whenever he was in Boston, and later gave Independence Day concerts in New York and other parts of the country. He died in 1892 giving a concert in St. Louis.

Today the Boston Pops carries on a glorious Fourth of July concert tradition that dates back to the 19th century.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Irish Echo music critic Earle Hitchner has written a great story - Mad for Trad in the Mountains - about the Catskills Irish Arts Week, taking place on July 10-16, 2011 in East Durham, NY.

Putting the 17th annual Irish music gathering in a larger context, Hitchner writes:

" During a time when the miasmic U.S. economy has convinced many summer music schools and festivals to cut costs by cutting staff, Paul Keating, the artistic director of CIAW since November 2003, has taken a counterintuitive approach. “Our budget has no frills, and some have suggested that I also trim personnel to save money,” he said by phone from his home in Hillsdale, N.J. “But I feel if I do, what’s going to attract people? The drawing card of the Catskills Irish Arts Week has always been the caliber of staff and performers we bring in each year.”